In the light of recent comments from a few poets on the site, concerning a stated difficulty or puzzlement with regard to accentual meters, I thought I would start a thread dedicated to the subject.

I don't know which one I had in mind now, but this is close at hand. And since our Tim typed it out for another thread some time ago, we will recycle it. This is a passage from Hop'e "Western Elegies", in accentual hexameter.

Who would care to admit to any difficulties scanning this one?


V. The Tongues

Suppiluliumas! What a marvelous name for a monarch,
Ruler of royal Hattusas, whom the thousand gods of the Hatti
Granted an enclave of empire, when Troy was a petty city,
That stretched from the Western Sea to the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The ribs of that carcasse, dear heart, full of archaeological maggots,
Seethe in the Anatolian springtime today at Boghazkoy.

Suppiluliumas the King, may his bones evade their researches;
For his name is a beacon to me of the fabulous babble of Babel,
That fountain of human tongues which I bless and rejoice in forever.
And the one great family of speech I have loved and explored since my boyhood,
That ‘centum’ branch of the western Indo-European hegirah,
First of them all that survives is the Hittite of Suppiluliumas.

Whence did they come? Through the Balkans or south by Georgia or westward by Persia
To settle perversely in Asia, like the feckless Tocharian Buddhists,
While their brothers, the Celts and the Slavs, the Greeks and conquering Latins
And the vanished Illyrians forced ever west their migrations of language.
And even German, that lingo of slaves from their Aryan masters
Transmitted to us today, is the language of Goethe and Shakespeare.

Suppiluliumas, you spoke two tongues of the Hittite dominion
And wrote to the rulers of Egypt, Assyria and Mitanni,
To each in his own true speech as a prince in his dealings with princes;
You would not have thought it a curse as the book of the Hebrews reputes it,
That confounding of tongues in the unfinished ziggurat built in Shinar,
Whence the rivers of language first flowed to enrich the glory of nations.

For the man who knows only one speech is an ox in a paradise orchard,
Munching on grass and ignoring the fruits of delectable flavor
That ripen upon its boughs and depend from the vines that adorn it.
The man who has only one tongue lives forever alone on an island
Shut in on himself by conventions he is only dimly aware of,
Like a beast whose mind is fenced by the narrow extent of its instincts.

But the man who thinks in two tongues wins his mind free of a bondage
Which a sole speech imposes on all his thinking and feeling;
Translate as he will, what is said in the one never matches the other
Precisely in ambience and reach, so his soul grows still and attentive,
Aware, beyond any one speech, of a metaphysics of meaning
Which teaches that not mere words but the heart is what must be translated.

For those mighty rivers of language that fashion the landscapes of time
Like the Amazon and the Danube, the Mississippi and Ganges
Though they set frontiers to nations, act as makers and bearers of spirit;
Growing in volume and power, they build the rich soils of tradition.
How could such marvellous gifts be cursed as the folly of Babel?

I think now of those I have learned, adapting my soul to their music:
Latin, old father of tongues, whose discipline was the adventure,
First step into unknown space, that tempered and tempted my boyhood
To discover new countries of mind called Ovid, Virgil, Catullus,
And the dense and disciplined march of a prose that thinks in inflections.
Then the daughters of Latin, the tongues of Italy, France and Iberia,
So rich in their colour and chime and each so diverse from the others;
And the tongues of the Goths and the Germans, the Norse and the Anglo-Saxons
Which I chose for my province of study when I thought of myself as a scholar—
They were native and near as I listened and moved from one to another
Getting the feel of their strange, their guttural dissonant music;
Till further afield I found the earthy abundance of Russian,
Last of the tongues of men into which my soul found translation.

Suppiluliumas, you were born in bilingual Hattusas;
Which speech did you use for love and in which make war and take counsel?
Which of them would you choose from your heart to the heart of a woman,
Sundered by race and belief, with the width of the world between them,
Yet joined by pride of the mind and the ancient worship of fire?
Surely you would not have sent those words by the usual channels,
Printed on well-baked brick in diplomatic Akkadian.
How shall I tell her, then, the instant thought of the moment,
Thought that can only be told, if at all, in the fire bird language?
How shall I tell her the world is simpler than men imagine,
For those set apart by God speak a tongue used only by angels;
That the distance from East to West is no more than its word for ‘I love you’?
And perpetual pentecost springs and renews itself in that message,
Which blesses the gift of tongues and crowns, the Venture of Babel,
Tongues that descend as flames and flicker about our temples
As we are caught up by the spirits to behold a new earth and new heaven,
We utter in unknown speech which we neither have learned nor remembered


[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 20, 2005).]

Reads as pentameter to me.

That referred to the poem initially posted along with the question of whether we had difficulty in reading it as accentual tetrameter.

There is a glaringly obvious problem with scanning this latest effort, as all sorts of sections open with Suppiluliumas, which is not fully included in my everyday vocab., I must confess. SUP-pi-LU-li-u-MAS has half my hexametric budget bursting on the first line almost before it's started.

A sign at the top saying THIS IS HEXAMETRIC, along with a contextually useful inclusion in, say, the quiz page at the back of a magazine, could probably motivate me to find six stressable syllables per line. I'd be hard put to come up with a reading like that under any - er - normal cicumstances though.

p

[This message has been edited by peter richards (edited August 20, 2005).]

Well, that's certainly another way to read it!

I have no idea what I am hearing here.

Was I thinking of another poem?

Maybe it's Alzheimers.

Just edited back to say I have reposted the top poem.


------------------
Mark Allinson

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 20, 2005).]

Mark, the one you have posted here now is dactyllic hexameter. You are apparently employing the term accentual to mean "other than iambic." I reserve the term accentual for lines that can't be scanned into duple or triple meter, although I realize many people use it to mean heavily substituted lines whose feet may have one, two, or three syllables in no particular pattern as long as the line has a set number of beats.

But even by that definition this poem is accentual-syllabic. Only one substitution occurs in the first stanza of this poem, a sort of reversed foot in the second line so that the third foot has an extra syllable and the fourth has only two, and I had no trouble with that--I think it is pretty standard substitution for triple meters. Otherwise the dactyllic flow sweeps through enjambments, wrapping from line to line. I can't imagine that Hope went to the trouble of writing this marvelous regular rhythm only to have it flattened into prose by the ignoring of all but the most dominant vocal stresses.

Suppiluliumas! What a marvelous name for a monarch,
Ruler of royal Hattusas, whom the thousand gods of the Hatti
Granted an enclave of empire, when Troy was a petty city,
That stretched from the Western Sea to the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The ribs of that carcasse, dear heart, full of archaeological maggots,
Seethe in the Anatolian springtime today at Boghazkoy.

Carol

I read it as dactylic hexameter too - but I also read it as overwritten babble.

I think there are limits to how long a line can be and still grab a reader - unless the language is magnificent - and this poem is a good demonstration. The language is very fine and flowing at times - pedantic at others - but the poem is not magnificent, and there are just too many sounds and syllables, too many thoughts, crammed into each line for the ear and eye to handle properly.

Iambic hex works, but it pushes the boundaries. Throw in the extra syllables of a dactyllic line, and all hexameter gets you is seasick. When I'm in charge, dactyllics will be limited to tetrameter. (I nervously await the deluge of rebuttals citing great works in dactyllic hexameter, but, hey, at least we're not talking politics.)

Michael Cantor

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited August 20, 2005).]

Mark

Sorry, but I'm with Carol and Michael, also. I'm trying to hear it as accentual, but it fails me. It is too heavy a beat.

A random line:

For the man who knows only one speech is an ox in a paradise orchard,

Stress by ear:

1232341341231241341


123/23/41/34/123/124/134 1

Heavily substituted.

But I'll repeat the question I just posted on the other thread. What's the difference how we label it? Will it change the way we read the line? Will it change the meaning? Does it matter, even, if we both call it metrical?

How does your label change the poem; make it different than my label?

ps - I'm assuming, BTW, you'd call that line accentual tet?

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited August 20, 2005).]

SUppilUliUmas! What a MARvelous NAME for a MONarch,
RUler of ROYal HattUsas, whom the THOUsand GODS of the HAtti

This how I read the opening name, which without its three accents would not be "a marvelous name".

Carol, I suppose I don't think of it as acc-syll because I never bother with counting syllables when I write them, which I do with all acc-sylls. I can't speak for Hope, but all I am doing when I write such lines is placing the high points of accent in a more or less dactyllic pattern. And that's it.

But I think Peter and Michael are right, that dac-hex is not the best medium for this discussion, so I would like to pick up the point from Jerry's thread, which was where this thread came from in the first place.

Here is the Larkin poem in question (also presently discussed on "Mastery")


Dublinesque

Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is pewter
And afternoon mist
Brings lights on in shops
Above race-guides and rosaries,
A funeral passes.

The hearse is ahead,
But after there follows
A troop of streetwalkers
In wide flowered hats,
Leg-of-mutton sleeves,
And ankle-length dresses.

There is an air of great friendliness,
As if they were honouring
One they were fond of;
Some caper a few steps,
Skirts held skilfully
(Someone claps time),

And of great sadness also.
As they wend away
A voice is heard singing
Of Kitty, or Katy,
As if the name meant once
All love, all beauty.

========

Jerry, you ask:

"What am I missing by not seeing these lines as dimeter?"

By which Jerry meant the long line in this poem.

Well, I would agree with Bob Mezey, who says that to miss the dimeter in the nine syllable line is to miss the writer's intention for reading the piece, and disrupting the flow of the entire poem.

I found another shorter line poem on a "Mastery" thread that readers appeared to have problems with, so here it is:


The Listeners

by Walter De La Mare


'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Hi Mark,

I think the Larkin is a good example of accentual dimeter. In accentual-syllabic meter there is a "rule" (plausibly based on practice) against having 3 unaccented syllables in a row -- one assumes the middle syllable will always be "promoted" to some extent. But here line 13 is clearly dimeter in context & so violates that rule; as perhaps do other lines in the poem:

LEG-of-mutton SLEEVES

some CAper a few STEPS

and of great SADness ALso

as if the NAME meant ONCE

I think in all 4 of these lines one is initially inclined to force the rhythm into a "legal" accentual-syllabic pattern:

leg-of-MUTon SLEEVES

some CAper a FEW steps

and of GREAT sadness ALso

as IF the name MEANT once

Nothing disprovable about these scansions, but I think the feeling of the lines comes across better the other way.

Anyway, a wonderful poem, wonderfully written.

The De La Mare, on the other hand, does seem metrically screwy to me. I have no problem with the trimeter short lines, but the long lines are hard to keep in a tetrameter rhythm. The very first line seems trimeter to me, for example. I guess I can see:

and he SMOTE upon the DOOR again a SEcond TIME

stood THRONGing the faint MOONbeams on the DARK STAIR

but it's too much of a stretch to come up with such readings in the flow of the poem. I see Henry has suggested on the other thread, "I suspect that the meter is more troublesome to some American ears." Yeah, that must be it...

AE,

I am so relieved to find a kindred reader of the Larkin.

Yes, forcing it into "acceptable" IP patterns wrecks it. I am grateful for your post.

In fact, I could say - "AE - I. O. U."

Yes, the de la Mare poem is more of a challenge, certainly. But I wonder why it should pose a greater challenge to American ears - if indeed it does?



------------------
Mark Allinson

AE

I don't see any of those lines as an exception. They each have promotions. Disregard the 'rules' and listen: we perform the promotions automatically. They're inherent in the spoken English language. Ignoring them just so we can those lines acc-dimeter seems counter productive.

Mark,

At this point you lose me. I'm going to read a line naturally: I'm not going to ignore natural accents and stresses and just stress two syllables.

Whatever you choose to call it, it reads aloud the same. So, I guess I have no problem with you calling it acc. dimeter, but I think most people would find it confusing to discuss it as such, and would respond better to the acc-syl terminology.

Again, the whole function of the terminology is to discuss the metrics. All it seems you're doing is muddying the conversation for a lot of people.

Those are much better examples, Mark. The Larkin is accentual dimeter and the de la Mare is accentual trimeter, long lines and all. If it seems clumsy to many ears that's because it is difficult to establish a rhythm in the absence of a pattern. I wouldn't go out of my way to write accentual meter; it must have taken a great deal of determination on de la Mare's part to avoid the obvious and go for the awkward and verbose:

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

instead of

Echoed through the still house's shadows

or the redundancy and strange usage of the verb in:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

when he could have said:

And he smote the door for a second time

and as long as he was going to such extremes to avoid accentual-syllabic meter, why the abbreviated 'neath?, which almost surely was invented by poets to comply with the demands of accentual-syllabic meter?

I keep thinking I've read this poem in Spanish, but maybe I'm mixing it up with something else. It's not a translation, is it? That would explain some of the choices.

Carol

Jerry,

I am sorry you feel I am merely "muddying the waters", I am trying to understand these meters myself, and in the process I often confuse myself.

Let's focus on the de la Mare poem.

Carol, I agree with your reading of this as consistent accentual trimeter:

'Is there ANYbody THERE?' said the TRAVeller,
KNOCKing on the MOONlit DOOR;
And his HORSE in the SILence champed the GRASSes
Of the FORest's FERny FLOOR:
And a BIRD flew up OUT of the TURRet,
AbOVE the TRAVeller's HEAD
And he SMOTE upon the DOOR again a SECond time;
'Is there ANYbody THERE?' he SAID.

I think it has a charming swing to it.

Jerry, how does this one sit for you?



------------------
Mark Allinson

Mark, I was trying to stay out of this , but you sucked me in with The Listeners.

I oversimplified or summarised incorrectly on that other thread when I said The Listeners was pretty well 4/3 throughout. Though the poem is through-printed (and I assume that’s how de la Mare wanted it), syntactically and structurally it consists of quatrains with the second and fourth lines rhymed. I'll set it out in that way below.

In each quatrain the first and third lines look and sound longer — this is because, whatever the number of speech stresses, the author packed more words into those lines. It’s so consistently done that it must have been intentional. The shorter, rhymed lines seem to rely less on a dramatic, rhetorical delivery — and they are all quite clearly trimeter. I read some of the longer lines as trimeter too, but some as tet.

Anyway, here’s my shot at marking the number of stresses line by line. Some of the longer lines (L1 and L3) could go either way, and I’ve indicated my reading for a few of them by way of example. 3343 3343 3343BANNED POST 4333 4333BANNED POST 3343 3343 3343BANNED POST 4333. (Did he originally write ten stanzas and cut out the penultimate one?) But really, if the poem works despite different readers’ stress perceptions, that’s to its credit, surely.


'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller, 3 --^---^--^--
Knocking on the moonlit door; 3
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses 4 --^--^-^-^-
Of the forest's ferny floor: 3

And a bird flew up out of the turret, 3
Above the Traveller's head 3
And he smote upon the door again a second time; 4 --^---^---^-^
'Is there anybody there?' he said. 3

But no one descended to the Traveller; 3
No head from the leaf-fringed sill 3
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, 4 -^--^---^^
Where he stood perplexed and still. 3

But only a host of phantom listeners 4 -^--^-^-^--
That dwelt in the lone house then 3
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight 3
To that voice from the world of men: 3

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, 4 -^---^---^^
That goes down to the empty hall, 3
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken 3
By the lonely Traveller's call.3

And he felt in his heart their strangeness, 3
Their stillness answering his cry, 3
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 4
'Neath the starred and leafy sky; 3

For he suddenly smote on the door, even 3 --^--^--^--
Louder, and lifted his head:- 3
'Tell them I came, and no one answered, 4
That I kept my word,' he said.3

Never the least stir made the listeners, 3
Though every word he spake 3
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house 4 -^----^-----^^
From the one man left awake: 3

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, 4
And the sound of iron on stone, 3
And how the silence surged softly backward, 3
When the plunging hoofs were gone.3


Carol, you start with the theory that it’s all trimeter, which makes you want to rewrite (disastrously, in my view) a line like :

....fell ECHoing through the SHADowiness of the STILL HOUSE

to make it fit your theory. Some of those longer lines are admittedly open to different readings, but I can't see a trimeter intent in the “shadowiness” line, nor in “Tell them I came, and no one answered” or a number of others.

My theory is a looser one. I think de la Mare used the clearer-cut “shorter” rhymed lines as a sort of rhythmic grounding for the accentual flights and variety in the longer lines — which feel and look longer even where they probably only have three stresses. I say “probably” because at this distance we can’t always be sure of the author’s intentions or how most of his readers might have spoken the lines. There’s an example in the first line: most educated British English speakers of his day probably said ANybody, not ANyBODy, hence I think that line is meant to be 'is there ANybody THERE? said the TRAVeller.

Words with three trailing unstressed syllables are still relatively common in British and Australian, but much less so in American speech. Consider words like exPLANatory (Brit) v exPLANaTORy (American). It’s this sort of difference that leads me to wonder if some accentual lines, especially where they require longer leaps between stresses, might be more troublesome to American ears.

Mark, notice that where we need to “skip over” a run of syllables, de la Mare seldom asks us to do that on content words that would be stressed in speech. The longest such run here is on SHADow-i-ness of the STILL HOUSE. On examination that isn’t really difficult: SHADowiness is a natural peonic dactyl — in a clearly accentual-syllabic context we would give the ness a light beat, but not here. And there’s no reason to stress the of or the the. This is different from some of the lines where you have been arguing that we should somehow know to skim over content words. The poem will be read the way it strikes the reader, and that will depend on how the author sets the context and chooses and arranges the words.

Henry



[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited August 20, 2005).]

Mark,
I like what Henry wrote about the difference of stress in American and English speech. Also, when reading aloud or internally, a sensitive performer/reader will add many checks and balances which are impossible to notate but which make the difference between doggerel and poetry. That's why in the end I find such discussions self-defeating.
Janet


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 20, 2005).]

Henry,

thank you so much for that detailed reading.

You say the poem seems to work anyway for most readers, but this poem appeared on "Mastery" in the context of puzzled responses that characterised the meter as "chaotic" or "satanic" - so I don't know if this one does work with any reading.

I agree with you on everything you say except the tets - to me it all fits well in 3s.

Many of those lines you are reading as tet, I would read as having virtual feminine endings - which I have hyphenated here:

a SECond-time

his GREY-eyes

on the DARK-stair,

In this line, I would elide the first four syllabels, like this:

B't'only'a HOSTof PHANtom LISTeners.

Which is how we would say it in the flesh - "b't'onlya" with the first major accent coming with "HOST".

Yes, I take your point questioning the longer lines, which do, at first, give the appearance of the ballad form. Maybe he just wanted this visual impression of a ballad on the page? I am not sure.

But I really don't think we need anything but tri-lines here.




------------------
Mark Allinson

Henry, it's probably my funky American ear, but I read it just as Mark does.

I don't think it's my attempt to read it as accentual trimeter that makes me say he went out of his way to make the following line clumsy:

Fell ECHoing through the SHAdowiness of the still HOUSE

It sounds twice as inept if you try to force a fourth beat onto it.

Carol

Mark, why cite “how we would say it” to justify suppressing the ONly in but only a HOST of PHANtom... yet ignore “how we would say it” in your idiosyncratic insistence on an unstressed final syllable in SECond time, GREY eyes and DARK stair?

Of course “how we say it” is the point in an accentual reading. It won’t always be the same for each reader, and I agree that the ONly is somewhat debatable, but I question whether anyone without a theory to defend would naturally read those adjective-noun line ends in the way you suggest.

Carol, I simply don’t agree that the shadowiness line is inept in context, nor can I read “still HOUSE” any more than I can read “STILL house” which I guess Mark prefers.

I’d like either or both of you to give me your trimeter readings for:

....While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

and

....tell them I came, and no one answered

Actually, I think the first of those hovers between tet and pent, depending on how willing one is to glide over the cropping. The pent reading would stress HORSE, MOVED, CROP, DARK, and TURF). And if so, if he has a lone line of pent, so what? It makes not a scrap of difference to the effect of the poem.

If you say you read “while his HORSE moved, CROPping the DARK turf” I’m giving up on you, Mark!

Henry

Henry, I promise you I have no "theory to defend", only my immediate feeling of how to read these things. I do believe the whole thing works better in 3s, which is not so much a theory as it is the product of my experience - and I think that the poet wrote it that way. I am not saying it doesn't or can't happen that a poet like this slips in a few tet or pent lines, but I would feel uncomfortable doing it in one of my tri poems. It feels a bit cheaty, somehow. I know that this will sound "hide-bound" to some, but I believe that the challenge for the writer (and the reader) is to stick with a set meter, and not just throw in an odd, asymmetic, longer line. As I say, I am sure this has been done, and maybe often done (that is, asymmetrical het-met), but I don't care for it myself, and I have a strong feeling de la Mare agrees. I think it is inelegant. It looks sloppy. It looks like the poet took an easy way out. Others will see it differently, as the expression of a greater freedom. Maybe they are right. Maybe I am just an old-fashioned fart. But to me this poem is consistent accentual trimeter. And if it had been my poem, I would have kept it all in tri, with no random variations.

Many, with some cause will read the line you quote like this:

While his HORSE moved, CROPping the dark TURF,

But (get ready to abandon me Henry - but hear me out first, please) I am not altogether averse to "DARK turf", which fits the established pattern of feminine endings - there are around a dozen orthodox ones in the poem like "stirrup" and "backward" etc., and the other virtual feminine ended pairs like "grey eyes" (although I grant that you could use this last bit as evidence of petitio principii in my argument). I think you could go with either of these. And, for the same reason, "STILL house" might be preferable.

and

TELL them I CAME, and no one ANswered

That is how you would expect to hear that said in normal speech, I would say.

Henry, before you give up on me forever, can you please allow me one more indulgence?

Can you please give this reading of the poem one try - without prejudice - just read it purely on the basis of what I have capitalised as the beat. And if you still feel that it doesn't work, then fair enough.


'Is there ANYbody THERE?' said the TRAVeller,
KNOCKing on the MOONlit DOOR;
And his HORSE in the SIlence champed the GRASSes
Of the FORest's FERny FLOOR:
And a BIRD flew up OUT of the TURRet,
AbOVE the TRAVeller's HEAD
And he SMOTE upon the DOOR again a SECond time;
'Is there ANYbody THERE?' he SAID.
But NO one desCENded to the TRAVeller;
No HEAD from the LEAF-fringed SILL
Leaned OVer and LOOKED into his GREY eyes,
Where he STOOD perPLEXed and STILL.
But only a HOST of PHANtom LISTeners
That DWELT in the LONE house THEN
Stood LISTening in the QUIet of the MOONlight
To that VOICE from the WORLD of MEN:
Stood THRONGing the faint MOONbeams on the DARK stair,
That goes DOWN to the EMpty HALL,
HEARKening in an AIR stirred and SHAKen
By the LOnely TRAVeller's CALL.
And he FELT in his HEART their STRANGEness,
Their STILLness ANswering his CRY,
While his HORSE moved, CROPPing the DARK turf,
'Neath the STARRed and LEAfy SKY;
For he SUDDenly SMOTE on the DOOR, even
LOUDer, and LIFTed his HEAD:-
'TELL them I CAME, and no one ANSwered,
That I KEPT my WORD' he SAID.
NEVer the least STIR made the LISTeners,
Though EVery WORD he SPAKE
Fell ECHoing through the SHADowiness of the STILL house
From the ONE man LEFT aWAKE:
Ay, they HEARD his FOOT upon the STIRRup,
And the SOUND of IRon on STONE,
And how the SILence surged SOFtly BACKward,
When the PLUNGing HOOFS were GONE.

===============



[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 21, 2005).]

But Mark, first you argue from accentual meter as based on the stresses of speech, the “how we would say it” principle, but then you switch to saying that because some of the longer lines have feminine endings they all must have, including GREY eyes, DARK turf, STILL house, etc (which to me are definitely how we DON’T say it).

Come on, Mark, step back and look at what you’re saying. If you spoke to me of a STILL house I would hear stillhouse and think you meant a building housing a still. You’re not using the principle of “how we say it” there, but the principle of trying to make it all trimeter, based on a theory about what lines an author would or wouldn’t, or should or shouldn’t, mix. That’s what you did with Cut Grass and you’re doing it again with this.

TELL them I CAME, and no one ANSwered looks like very much a minority reading to me, though not as much so as While his HORSE moved, CROPPing the DARK turf,which seems simply perverse.

I would never describe de la Mare’s variations as “random”. They’re part of the variations in pace which he so notably achieves.

As for the idea that “asymmetrical het-met” is some sort of “cheating” — did Milton and Wordsworth “cheat” with their great odes in asymmetric het-met? Did Arnold cheat with Dover Beach?

Enough!

Mark

I'm sorry if my comment about muddying the waters came out harsher than I intended.

I can see what you're doing, and I appreciate the time you've taken to explain it to me.

Yes, I can read the strongest stresses in the de la Mare poem as you have indicated. But that's not the way the way I would read the poem aloud: I would include the lesser stresses, also.

'Is there Anybody THERE?' said the TRAVeller,

I think you've mis-scanned 'anybody'. I hear a primary stress on -bod- and a secondary on an-. No stress on the -y-.

KNOCK/ing on/ the MOON/lit DOOR;
And his HORSE /in the SIL/ence champed/ the GRASSes
Of/ the FOR/est's FER/ny FLOOR:
And a /BIRD flew /up OUT /of the TURRet,
AbOVE /the TRAVel/ler's HEAD

I concede a point that this looks more consistent calling it accentual trimeter - more polished also - but that's not the only way it could be scanned.

The test of the pudding is still to read it aloud *groan*, and I still wouldn't read it differently were we to call it accentual or accentual-syllabic. I mean, if you were reading this aloud, would you intentionally fail to add the stresses I italicised, as well as some I didn't?

So, we conced the author's intent was accentual, but as Carol stated, it comes out awkward and verbose. I say let's clean it up into good ol' acc-syl *grin*

I will, however, concede the accentual intent of the author.




[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited August 21, 2005).]

I wish we had a sound system. We could settle it in two ticks.
Brit/English eliding essential to get the beat.
Janet


'is there ANybody THERE?' said the TRAveller,
KNOcking on the MOONlit DOOR;
and his HORSE in the SIlence champed the GRASses
of the FOrest's FERny fLOOR:
and a BIRD flew UP out of the TUrret,
aBOVE the TRAveller's HEAD
and he SMOTE upon the DOOR again a SE-COND TIME;
'is there ANybody THERE?' he SAID.
but NO one deSCENded to the TRAveller;
no HEAD from the LEAF-FRINGED SILL
leaned Over and LOOKED into his GREY EYES,
where he STOOD perPLEXED and STILL.
but Only a HOST of phantom LISTeners
that DWELT in the LONE house THEN
stood LISTening in the QUIET of the MOONlight
to that VOICE from the WORLD of MEN:
stood THRONGing the faint MOONbeams on the DARK STAIR,
that goes DOWN to the EMPty HALL,
HEARKening in an AIR stirred and SHAken
by the LONEly TRAveller's CALL.
and he FELT in his HEART their STRANGEness,
their STILLness ANswering his CRY,
while his HORSE moved, CROPping the DARK TURF,
'neath the STARRED and LEAfy SKY;
for he SUDdenly SMOTE on the DOOR, Even
LOUder, and LIFted his HEAD:-
'TELL them I CAME, and no one ANswered,
that I KEPT my WORD,' he SAID.
NEver the least STIR made the LISTeners,
though Every WORD he SPAKE
fell Echoing through the SHAdowiness of the STILL HOUSE
from the ONE man LEFT aWAKE:
ay, they HEARD his FOOT upon the STIRrup,
and the SOUND of Iron on STONE,
and how the SIlence SURGED softly BACKward,
when the PLUNging HOOFS were GONE.

Henry, here's how I read the lines in their accentual context:


While his HORSE moved, CROPping the dark TURF,

and

tell them i CAME, and NO one ANswered

The poem is clearly accentual. The question you ask is whether it is accentual trimeter or a combination of accentual trimeter and tetrameter. To me, neither of those two lines makes sense as accentual tetrameter, but they flow naturally as accentual trimeter. Why would you stress TELL or WHILE outside an accentual-syllabic setting?

In an accentual-syllabic setting, I'd read the first line as either pentameter or trimeter, depending on context, and the second as tetrameter:

while his HORSE/ ^ MOVED,/ ^ CROP/ping the DARK/ ^ TURF,/
or
while his HORSE/ moved CROP/ping the DARK TURF (spondee)/

and

TELL them/ i CAME,/ and NO/ one AN/swered (feminine)


I think that rather than trying to support an agenda, whether the agenda is proving that vocal and metrical stress ought to be one and the same or proving that every other syllable has to have some kind of metrical stress, and rather than imposing a reader's own regional dialect or interpretation of content onto his reading, it's the reader's challenge to try to find the poem's intended rhythm; that is, to try to read it as the poet wrote it to be read, always assuming enough skill on the poet's part that he has been able to effect a rhythm and still put across his intended meaning through the words he stresses.

While I find some of de la Mare's lines overwritten, I have no trouble picking up the poem's natural 3-beat rhythm as long as I don't try to force my own scansion on it.

Carol

Sorry for the double post.

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited August 21, 2005).]

Good idea, and one that might help with the questions I have.

Give me three volunteers: send me a sound file of you reading the poem, and I'll post it online with a link.

Carol? Mark? Henry?

admin@the-buckeye.org

p.s. - For those brave enough, I can post videos, also *grin*

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited August 21, 2005).]

Carol,
You and I are in agreement for most of this poem but I do think that de la Mare deliberately breaks the trimeter several times for dramatic emphasis. The effect is still very metric and it works into the flow.
The example below is also onomatopoeic.


and he SMOTE/ upon the DOOR/ again a SE-COND/ TIME; (4)
'is there ANybody THERE?' he SAID. (3)

I do think the American/English difference makes all the difference in this case.
Janet


I've just read all the preceding interpretations of one of the lines. It reminds me of the old actor rehearsing "To be or not to be".;)



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 21, 2005).]

Henry, I should have been more specific - asymmetric accentual het-met is what I should have said - a mixed accentual poem, rather than mixed acc-syll, like those you mention.

While it is possible to find four words in some lines that seem to have claim on a stress - that is, those perceived spondaic endings (and why would a writer want to do an ugly thing like that?) - the net result is still a sensation of the three strong beats per line. That is what accentual tri-meter means to me, three BIG BEATS per line. Anyone worried about relative stresses or implied stresses or secondary stresses in accentual verse has missed the point entirely. THREE BIG BEATS, three main pulses, is all you need. Those perceived spondaic endings, such "DARK STAIR", and "GREY EYES", seem too heavy-handed in a context of a dozen natural feminine endings. In whatever configuration, I hear them as a single beat - "greyeyes", "darkstair" - not "grey ... eyes" and " dark ... stair". A light touch, in the reading as much as in the writing, is the secret to accentual verse. Stress sensitivity, picked up over decades of IP training, might actually prove a disability when reading accentuals - finding words which might be significant stresses in an IP context, but have no bearing in an accentual poem.

Henry, it's true, I do often contradict myself in my explanations of how I hear what I hear. Mainly because I am experimenting with explanations, since I have no idea how I hear what I do. I am trying to work backwards, from practice to theory. But since actual practice, in reading and in writing, is the important thing, I don't mind if my theory is still somewhat inchoate.




------------------
Mark Allinson

Glad to see you don’t read “STILL house” etc, Janet.

Posting sound files would get us nowhere, Jerry. We’d just be arguing about whether the scansions were an accurate mapping of the stress — which they wouldn’t be.

If others think suppressing the speech stress on a main, imperative verb like TELL in “TELL them I CAME...” or on other main content words in a line is a natural reading, I’m content that we agree to differ. I wish I hadn’t put any time and energy into this fruitless argument, and I’m certainly not going to put in any more.

Henry



[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited August 21, 2005).]

Hello everyone,

I think that one thing that is getting lost in this discussion is the function of phrasing in accentual meter. It is not that there has to be only two stressed syllables in a line, but that there has to be one highest peak in each phrase. This is how Larkin does it, and I think this is why his poem works better. If I am correct, the lines that break the rule against three unpromoted syllables in a row break easily in two. While the lines that won’t break easily in two don’t break the rule. So even if you read: "THERE is an AIR of GREAT FRIENDliness." The line still breaks into two parts with two highest peaks on "air" and "friend." The line itself takes on an expansive and overall ascending feel, with a two-syllable release after “friend.” The line is a perfect sound-picture of Larkin’s meaning. It is expansive and down to earth. If it didn’t match his meaning so well it wouldn’t work. The point is, and Dana Gioia makes this point in an essay on his website, that accentual meters work best when the author tries to avoid metrical ambiguity, or when the author writes accentuals that flow naturally in speech. I think that that is why accentual meters usually break into groups of two.

On the other hand I kind of like what de le Mare has done:

Stood thronging /the faint moonbeams /on the dark stair,

So you could say this line with six stresses: stood, throng, faint, moon, dark, and stair. But it still can break into three parts with one peak each on throng, moon, and dark even with those other stresses. I actually like de la Mare’s pattern a lot. It’s kind of sublime in it’s ambitions. But I don’t think he establishes his pattern as clearly as Larkin.

Am I not right?

Scott.

p.s.
To borrow some lines from AE: (The divisions are mine)
LEG-of-mutton / SLEEVES

some CAper / a few STEPS

and of great SADness / ALso
(in this line the also is an addendum, not as essential to the meaning of the phrase and so it break easily there)

as if the NAME / meant ONCE

I think in all 4 of these lines one is initially inclined to force the rhythm into a "legal" accentual-syllabic pattern:

leg-of-MUTon SLEEVES

some CAper a FEW steps

and of GREAT sadness ALso

as IF the name MEANT once

The strenth of accentual-syllabics is that it gives more of a driving sense to each word. In accentual meters the rythm moves more in phrases. I don't think it works to only stress the highest points with, but rather to read naturally dividing the motion of the sounds into groups around the highest stresses. If the accents don't flow somewhat naturally, then the accentual meter isn't very valid. You win or lose the reader based on how normative you can make the pattern for him/her without being boring.

Here is Gioia's website. He doesn't mention phrasing. But he does mention metrical ambiguity:
http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eaccentual.htm After you read this, go back and read Micheal Juster's poem again. It's quite beautiful.

Scott.

Carol,
I suspect the meter isn't as clear-cut as as consistent accentual trimeter, and I think if you try to read it as such you run into problems and stumble on those longer lines, which is probably part of the reason some people here have trouble with them; for example when you try to read the deliberately peculiar word "champed" as unstressed. De le Mare may have used something like accentual trimeter to get the framework, but I feel that part of the power in this poem is the way it alternates trimeter with tetrameter,and even, possibly, pentameter (but I won't try to push that one). I may be completely wrong of course; this is just how it sounds to me, when I read it to myself. I was wondering how the man himself might have read it and I actually have a recording of poets that includes three De la Mare poems, but not, unfortunately The Listeners. Interesting to hear him though, a rather nasal, posh, 1930/40s Brit accent, an early BBC voice, but pleasant enough, and not overly mechanical at all.

Anyway, this is how I hear it the accents in my head:


Is there ANYbody THERE?' said the TRAveller,
KNOCKing on the MOONlit DOOR;
And his HORSE in the SIlence CHAMPED the GRAsses
Of the FORest's FERny FLOOR:
And a BIRD flew up OUT of the TURret,
aBOVE the TRAveller's HEAD
And he SMOTE upon the DOOR aGAIN a SECond time;
'Is there ANYbody THERE?' he SAID.
But NO one desCENded to the TRAveller;
No HEAD from the LEAF-fringed SILL
Leaned OVer and LOOKED into his grey EYES,
Where he STOOD perPLEXED and STILL.
But ONly a HOST of PHANtom LISteners
That DWELT in the LONE house THEN
Stood LIStening in the QUIET of the MOONlight
To that VOICE from the WORLD of MEN:
Stood THRONGing the faint MOONbeams on the DARK stair,
That goes DOWN to the EMpty HALL,
HEARKening in an air STIRRED and SHAken
By the LONely TRAveller's CALL.
And he FELT in his HEART their STRANgeness,
Their STILLness ANswering his CRY,
While his horse MOVED, CROPping the dark TURF,
'Neath the STARRED and LEAfy SKy;
For he SUDdenly SMOTE on the DOOR, even
LOUDer, and LIFted his HEAD:-
'TELL them i CAME, and NO one ANswered,
That I KEPT my WORD,' he SAID.
NEVer the least STIR made the LISteners,
Though EVery WORD he SPAKE
Fell EChoing through the SHADowiness of the STILL house
From the ONE man LEFT aWAKE:
AY, they HEARD his FOOT upon the STIRrup,
And the SOUND of IRON on STONE,
And how the SIlence SURGED SOFtly BACkward,
When the PLUNging HOOFS were GONE.

Mark, thanks for putting that poem before me again, and for the pleasure I got from reading it through once more.

[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited August 22, 2005).]

If a good poem doesn't conform to the rules--then suspect the rules. The law is often an ass.
Janet

The Bean Counters
By Agony Cramp


“Has anybody acted?” said the poet
Beating out a plot in verse;
But the academics chewed upon their nosebags
and some let fall a curse.
And a novelist ran out of the cloister,
behind the poet’s back.
And he beat upon the door again a second time;
Is anybody in this shack?
But none condescended to the poet,
no eye to the lock was pressed
to peer through the chink at his red nose
nor offer a rag to blow it.
But only the metronomes answered
from deep in the catacombs
from out of their wood and metal boxes
in voices grey and rancid;
cloned rhythms in syllabics without meaning
were heard in the theatre’s boom,
echoing like a vast cathedral
to the poet's sense of doom.
And his feet were worn out with thumping,
his bunions torturing his soul.
While his play, failed, plotless and unending,
fell down a deep black hole;
So he bitterly beat on the door, shouting
“Bastards” and lifted his fists:--
“Tell them I know, where their books are
and I know how this plot twists.”
Never an acknowledgement they gave him.
Though they heard every word.
Their ivory towers impregnable and inward
held tenure long preferred.
Ay, they heard his feet upon the meter
and the beat of crutches on stone,
And how the pages fell upon the pavement
when the poet left, alone.



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 21, 2005).]

Scott, thank you for your contribution. I like your idea of the peak within a phrase. There is a difficulty with the descriptive language we use to describe these things, and I am searching for new tools like this to help understand how it works.

But perhaps I will never understand it.

I do agree that "The Listeners" is rather messy in places, giving too much scope for ambiguity in meter.

Janet!

I just saw your poem. It is very good!

Now, tell us - from the horse's mouth - what is your scansion?

------------------
Mark Allinson

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 21, 2005).]

34--23--34

Not bad eh?;)

Janet

Excellent figures!

A sexy poem!

------------------
Mark Allinson

Mark and Henry!!!!!

I have Carol's sound file for The Listeners. I don't want to post it until I have yours also.

Where are they?!

Sound file? What sound file?

I'm disappointed that Hope's vast hieratic utterance has been so slighted here-- and that no one has visited the Beowulf in a discussion of accentual verse.

'The Listeners' is tricky business, but it's ballad stanza as far as I'm concerned. That or chaos, and I don't buy chaos for this poem.

Alan

The ballad stanza, to my knowledge, is A4 B3 C4 B3, which would disqualify The Listeners, both in terms of rhyme and meter, though its meter certainly has echoes of the 3/4 contrast. But the first lines, to my ear, read A3 B3 C4 B3.

The subject matter, on the other hand, is perfectly suitable, though the atmosphere is more Gothic than a traditional ballad (in my experience anyway).

But I fail to see why metrical irregularities in The Listeners should mean it is in any way chaotic. On the contrary, I would suggest such unevenness is deliberate, part of the mysterious texture of the poem, part of the spell of its unique, dreamy atmosphere. The strangely archaic or odd words (champed, smote, 'neath etc.) also contribute to this.

Incidentally, there's a lovely bit of rhyming magic/mimesis in the final word, where the vowel-sound shifts/gallops from long (stone) to short (gone).


[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited August 25, 2005).]

I mis-spoke. Ballad measure. 4-3 alternation. Many readers here seem to have difficulty discerning between secondary and primary stress. That poem is maddeningly ambiguous in some of its 4 stress lines, but the overall pattern is unmistakable.

I challenged people, specificly Mark Allison, Carol and Henry to send me sound files of them reciting The Listeners, to hear the differences. I wondered if their labels affected the way they read the poem.

I'll post the files online.

Anyone can send a file, if they wish.

admin@the-buckey.org